


across the universe

by Polexia_Aphrodite



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: 1890s, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Napoleonic Wars, Alternate Universe - Regency, F/M, Klondike Gold Rush, War of 1812
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-01-12 20:37:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1199400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polexia_Aphrodite/pseuds/Polexia_Aphrodite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of historical AUs from prompts given on Tumblr or otherwise.</p><p>Chapter 1: <i>a man of good fortune</i> - A Steve/Darcy Pride & Prejudice AU</p><p>Chapter 2: <i>all that glitters</i> - A Steve/Darcy Klondike Gold Rush AU</p><p>Chapter 3: <i>the dawn</i> - A Steve/Natasha medieval AU</p><p>Chapter 4: <i>honey honey</i> - A Steve/Darcy/Bucky Napoleonic-era AU</p><p>Chapter 5: <i>in the desert</i> - A Steve/Peggy 1920s Egyptology AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a man of good fortune

**Author's Note:**

> These little story pieces all come from prompts given on Tumblr or otherwise. For my own reasons, I'd like to say that if any of you reading feel like picking any of these ideas up for more full-length fics, I own neither the characters, nor history, and I'd very much encourage it. These are meant to be short-ish drabble-y things, but could always be fleshed out into something longer, if any of you feel up to it.
> 
> Feel free to hang out with me on Tumblr - I'm [hardboiledmeggs](http://hardboiledmeggs.tumblr.com/). And if you have an historical AU idea, feel free to drop it in my [Ask Box](http://hardboiledmeggs.tumblr.com/ask). Details about available pairings and such are in [this post](http://hardboiledmeggs.tumblr.com/post/76329978136/all-the-historical-aus).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks go to [Merideath](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Merideath/pseuds/Merideath) and [JadeCharmer](http://archiveofourown.org/users/JadeCharmer/pseuds/JadeCharmer) for looking over this first chapter, which was written in response to a Steve/Darcy Pride and Prejudice AU prompt from the lovely [katertots](http://archiveofourown.org/users/katertots/pseuds/katertots). Because Captain America as a Brit made my head hurt, I switched it to the other side of the pond, in the same time period, so hopefully you all can excuse a little divergence from the original prompt :)

_It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife._

 

**1813**  
 **Dutchess County, New York**

It is a time of year Darcy Lewis prefers most, when a crisp spring melts into the warmth of summer. She is an avid disciple of the season, feeling at her most vibrant and alive when her skin is warmed by the sun and the scent of green grass fills her lungs. Under blue skies, the outdoors is a natural escape from her home – a sturdy kind of cottage typical to gentlemen farmers like her father, well furnished, and with fashionable-enough paper on the walls, but dark and smoky, and drafty in either winter or summer.

She takes refuge in the company of Jane, too – a beloved sister who excels where Darcy fails. It’s Jane whose delicate hands can press flowers and expertly sketch waterbugs and veiny leaves from the white oak trees that surround their property. It’s Jane whose sharp mind can memorize constellations, whose deep well of patience allows her to tolerate Darcy’s taciturn moods, sarcastic humor and flighty sensibilities. Lacking Jane’s finely tuned, scientific mind, and disinclined to participate in the tedium of handcrafts, Darcy more often finds herself lost in novels or aimlessly traversing the quiet expanse of the Lewis property.

There’s something else that comes to their little hamlet that spring – something that goes decidedly against the usual, pacific transition between seasons. Fresh from Fort George, the entire county is set upon by recently-victorious soldiers and officers, searching for respite in their warm, peaceful valley. And then, news comes that Netherfield Park is let at last. It’s a palatial stone estate that exists only for a rarefied few. And when news comes of the new tenant, it’s a story better than any Mrs. Radcliffe could have written: a disgraced Scandinavian prince and his enigmatic sister, escorted by a captain who had recently seen service aboard the _Chesapeake_.

But rumors and hearsay only count for so much, and when at last an invitation comes to a ball at the neighboring Meryton estate, Jane and Darcy are sure these mysterious new inhabitants must make an appearance. The thought is not theirs alone, and in the days leading up to the fête the very air in their valley seems to swell with the irresistible idea of encountering the prestigious newcomers.

At Meryton, at last, the whole county turns out as something other than they are – ladies who spend their days hunched over embroidery are transformed in diaphanous white gowns, and industrious farmers with calloused fingers turn into straight-backed gentlemen. At the first glance of the trio, all present seem to come to an immediate and mutual agreement that they are the handsomest and most agreeable new connexions. Through the haze of these lightning-fast first impressions, introductions are made, the music begins, and the dance floor is filled.

To the gentlemen – the tall, sturdy prince with his beatific smile, and the captain – the families of the county thrust forward their eligible daughters. The prince gamely offers his arm to all the ladies pressed towards him, hardly leaving a moment between dances for rest or refreshment.

Captain Rogers, though, dances the two-thirds with the prince’s black-haired sister and spends the rest of the evening walking here and there, talking to no one and looking distressingly uncomfortable. He’s unbearably good looking; even his disagreeable countenance can’t hide it. Darcy fights to keep her eyes off him – the broad, straight line of his shoulders under blue wool, the sculpted lines of his face, the full curve of his mouth. She can tell that he’s of a nobler extraction than the rest of the county – there’s none of the hardworking Dutch in him, bound to the earth by tradition and pride.

From the other side of the room, he meets her eyes once, then twice, and Darcy feels something hot slide up her spine and burn her cheeks. She pulls at the fingers of her gloves.

“The way he looks at you,” Jane whispers into Darcy’s ear with an insinuating tone and a sly smile, but Darcy can see that Jane's eyes aren’t really on Captain Rogers at all, and when she leaves Darcy and sidles close enough, the prince notices her and flashes a wide smile.

Even from across the room, even though all she does is watch him talk to Jane, Darcy decides immediately that she likes the prince. His easy laugh, and the way his eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles is worth more than fame and money. With Jane lost for the evening, Darcy takes a place along the outmost edge of the room, content to lean against a paneled wall and observe the merriment before her.

After half an hour, Captain Rogers and his Nordic companion have joined her along the wall, talking in low tones, with a mug of cider each. Over her shoulder, she can hear the prince chiding the captain for his ill manners, his reticence and snobbishness.

“Look here, Rogers,” he says, “The ladies are lovely and dance divinely. Why should you hide here?”

“You have already found the loveliest.”

Darcy risks a glance towards them, and sees the quiet, generous smile Captain Rogers flashes at his friend.

“What of her sister?” the prince pushes on, his voice lowering further, “I dare say, she is uncommonly handsome.”

“Not handsome enough to tempt me,” is what the captain says in reply. It makes Darcy’s heart stop and her blood still – not because it seems true, but because it seems like a lie. She can tell that lies don’t come easily to Captain Rogers, but he’s made an attempt at one all the same.

To his credit, the prince gives no answer, but throws up a hand and saunters off to find Jane.

Left alone, Darcy turns towards him fully, arch curiosity burning at the back of her mind.

“Do you not dance, Captain?”

She knows the answer, but she wonders how it’ll sound when he says it to her. He meets her eyes hesitantly.

“I do not make a habit of it, no.”

Darcy forces down an incredulous smirk. He’s slighted her twice now in as many hours, and she’s sure she ought to be perturbed by his boorishness instead of amused, but up close he gives off a hapless, helpless air.

“Perhaps the ladies are not so agreeable in the country as they are in New York.” His head turns toward her sharply, but Darcy answers his unguarded expression with a slow smile. He ducks his head. His humility in realizing that he has been overheard works in his favor.

Captain Rogers takes a deep breath, and lets loose a shaky exhalation. Darcy watches him closely; her eyebrows raise slightly, and she hopes it doesn’t seem too coy, even if it is.

“I—“ he starts and stops. She sees a faint blush rise on his cheeks. He clears his throat. “Perhaps an exception can be made. For the occasion.”

He extends an elbow to her, and Darcy can do nothing else but take it. Through her silk gloves and the blue fabric of his sleeve, embroidered with gold lines denoting his rank, Darcy can feel the barest hints of firm muscle and warm skin.

He leads her into the center of the room, the music rises, his palm presses flat against hers, and they begin.


	2. all that glitters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was written in response to a prompt from Merideath, who asked for a California Gold Rush Darcy/Bucky/Steve AU. This is kind of…not that. But I had already started a little Steve/Darcy Klondike Gold Rush AU, and I thought the wonderful Meri would appreciate it, and that this would be a good opportunity to trot it out. I swear I'll be fulfilling future prompts more faithfully. Hope you all like it.

**1897**

There’s nothing left for Bucky and Steve in Brooklyn. The Panic of ’93 has left their pockets empty for too long, and in the winter of ’96, the galloping consumption carries away their Peg. They keep each other afloat for a while, picking up odd jobs, but then the headlines hit: _GOLD! GOLD! GOLD!_ There’s a steamer in San Francisco and a steamer in Seattle piled high with it, straight from the Klondike, and suddenly their hearts are set for the west. 

A monstrous black train belches dark coal-smoke as it carries them through the wide-open spaces of the American Midwest, all the way to the Pacific Ocean, to Seattle’s busy, dirty streets and wood-slatted sidewalks. They pick up the recommended ton of goods – dried foods and gold pans and picks, and dress themselves in Filson wool. Loaded up, they hop a ship north. There’s a frenzied excitement that comes with being _stampeders_ , striking out, doing something wild and crazy and _real_.

But after weeks of travel, things start to fall apart. The despair first sets in when they hit Chilkoot Pass, lugging their supplies up and down the steep trail, praying an avalanche won’t hit. They see men frozen, defeated, dead. They see stampeders get their supplies washed away in the Yukon River. When they finally get to the interior of Alaska, there’s a sort of relief that comes with actually seeing it – the gold fields. They’re something like what Steve read about: frozen earth streaked with snow drifts, a landscape covered by a network of winding sluice boxes filled with water and glittering soil. They stake a claim and pick up a team in Dawson – a hardscrabble but enthusiastic group – get a fistful of gold dust each, and the horror of it starts to fade.

Bucky loves Dawson, and it’s no surprise, really. Every chance he gets, he drags Steve into the muddy, frozen streets, into saloons and dance halls where they spend their earnings faster than they made them. Steve knows they ought to be frugal, but he’s seen Bucky wake up in too many cold sweats, his head filled with memories of the Pass, of blue fingers and noses and the wails of drowning men, and he can’t deny him a little pleasure.

It’s in Dawson, in the crowded, raucous Dead Horse Saloon, that they meet _her_. She sidles up to them straight away – Diamond Darcy, star of the Tivoli. She’s made up like a China doll, all lily-white skin and rouged cheeks. Her eyes sparkle blue; her hair is dotted with bright silk flowers. Topaz and tourmaline hang from her ears, set in gold. 

“Heard you boys hit the motherlode,” she grins, pressing in closer until she’s against the bar between them, leaning back on her elbows and flashing a sweet smile. She smells like jasmine; the neckline of her dress, lined in pale pink chiffon, is low enough to make Steve blush and stare at his drink.

“Sure did,” Bucky grins, digging in his pocket and pulling out a buckskin poke, letting it dangle from his fingers.

Darcy’s smile widens. She calls the bartender over with a flick of her fingers, and orders them each a glass of champagne.

“Calls for a celebration,” she tells Steve, looking up at him through dark eyelashes.

She stays next to them all night, ordering round after round, until Bucky’s poke is half-empty. She takes turns pulling them onto the dance floor for two dollars a turn. Bucky’s a better dancer, and he takes her up on rousing, fast-paced songs; Steve waits for a slow, lilting melody to wrap his arms around her. 

Steve tells himself it’ll be a one-off, that it was just a weak night when they both needed a little womanly comfort. But it happens again, and again and again. After endless, exhausting days, it becomes a usual thing for Bucky and Steve to end their nights two drinks deep and wrapped up in Darcy. 

Steve knows what kind of girl she is – the kind that mines miners, letting them empty their pockets on drinks and dances, until they stumble back home, happy but broke. It feels a little tawdry, a little cheap, especially when either of them spends too much time remembering Peg, but there’s something understanding about Darcy. There’s a kindness in her that shines out through her smiles and the way her eyes light up whenever they walk up to her. And holding her feels good, feels right. 

“Come upstairs with me,” she whispers up to Steve one night, while he turns her around the room to a slow, easy song that hides his two left feet. Her tone is low and earthy and everything Steve wants to hear. “You can bring your friend, if you want.”

Steve hesitates. He thinks of the stern, disapproving look Peg would give him, if she could see him now, if she knew how much he wants to say yes, to follow Darcy to her room, to make love to her in a room filled with the scent of her perfume and all the delicate foofaraws women like her surround themselves with.

“’Fraid I can’t afford it.”

Darcy blinks. Something strange passes over her face, and Steve’s sure he’s offended her some way. Her feet slow down and stop.

“Don’t recall namin’ a price,” she murmurs, and Steve feels his face flush, “but at least you’re honest. That’s more than most can say, out here.”

She gives him a wan smile, lets him go, and disappears into the crowd.

*

It’s months before the day comes when their fortunes change, when Steve ends up at the Dead Horse flat broke and ready to give up. He spends his last coin on a tumbler of whiskey, and hopes Darcy won’t be sore at him when he turns her down for a dance.

“Where’s your friend?” she asks when she finally finds him.

“Bucky?” Steve shakes his head, runs a hand across the stubble on his jaw and smiles, “Findin’ comfort elsewhere.”

Darcy looks at him with raised eyebrows, so Steve keeps going. His fingers trace the cut glass ridges on his tumbler. “Found himself a Russian redhead. Hasn’t left her side since things started goin’ downhill.”

She nods, then slides her hand into his.

“Come upstairs with me now. Let me show you something. Something you haven’t seen in too long.”

*

Darcy leads him past the bar, past the dance floor, up a flight of polished wood stairs. Her room is small – wallpapered in red damask and lit by an oil lamp with a frosted glass shade. A large brass-framed bed fills the space.

To his surprise, she leads him through the room, past the bed, past a large vanity with a tall, oval mirror, it’s surface covered in tiny perfume bottles, sparkling baubles and jars of cold cream. The door she pulls him through leads into a small, tiled room, that holds a white porcelain bathtub, raised on claw feet and full of steaming, cloudy water that smells like musk and the same jasmine Darcy wears.

Steve’s jaw drops. He can feel Darcy at his back and turns.

“I can’t—“

“Sure you can. Free of charge and everything.”

She smiles up at him and disappears back into her bedroom. Alone, Steve hesitates for a moment, but the hot water and his aching muscles are too convincing. He strips and sinks into the tub, letting the heat and oil seep into him. He runs damp hands over his face and neck and hair and leans back, closing his eyes and tipping his head against the cool edge. The tight, dreadful feeling in his chest starts to ease up. He’d never cared too much about the gold, but it was hard to escape the sense of panic and horror that came with realizing it had gone and dried up. 

Half an hour later, his eyes open at the sound of the door. 

Darcy’s dressed in a gauzy chemise that falls to her knees; her hair is down, curling around her shoulders. Her face is scrubbed clean of makeup. He watches silently as she leans down, bracing one hand on each side of the tub and stepping in with him, framing his hips with her knees and letting her calves curl around his thighs. White fabric floats in the water around them; Darcy’s hips lower, and a thin line of cotton is all that separates the hard line of his cock from the soft heat of her cunt.

“ _Darcy_ ,” he groans, fitting his hands against the curve of her hips, trying to keep his hips still and his eyes up and off of the swell of her breasts where the dampened chemise clings to her skin.

“Tonight’s off the books, remember?” She leans forward, her arms sliding around his bare shoulders, her lips press against the side of his neck.

“Why?”

She smiles and shifts to look at him, the tip of her nose brushes his. “I like you. Don’t need much more reason than that.”

Steve frowns and Darcy leans back.

“’cause you’re honest and you’ve got kind eyes.” Her hands slide between them; her fingers wrap around him and _pull_. “You’re not like the others around here. Bunch of brutes and idiots.” Steve melts under her, finally letting himself fuck up against her hand. “You look at me like I’m a person.”

Steve’s frown deepens; he feels his brow furrow. He sits up, ignoring the rough friction where their bodies meet and wrapping his arms around her waist. 

“Aren’t you?”

There it is again – that strange expression that flits across her face, the one that Steve can’t hope to understand. She rises, and the water in the bathtub heaves at the sudden change. Standing over him, she pulls the soaked chemise up and over her head, letting it fall on the tile floor with a wet _smack_.

Darcy steps out onto the floor, gripping the edge of the tub for balance; her skin glistens gold in the low lamplight. Steve watches, mesmerized and unsure, as she runs a white towel up and down her arms and legs, then hands it out to him.

“Come on then.”

He rises, takes the proffered towel, dries himself and follows her into her bedroom. When she pulls aside the blankets and lets him lie atop her on clean, white sheets, he can’t tell if he’s more relieved to finally have her like this, or to finally be in a real bed after months and months in his rough hewn bunk with its itchy blankets.

Steve wishes he could say he’d never imagined what it would be like to be in Darcy’s bed, But even if he’s been so indelicate, whatever he’d imagined pales in comparison to the reality of it. She squeezes him tight with arms and legs, sucks kisses onto his shoulders and arms, makes him feel more whole and alive than he has in weeks.

“You feel—“ he starts, but there aren’t words for it, for the hot clench of her around his cock, for the things she does to him.

He loses himself for a long time, makes it last, makes it count. If he has to return from the gold fields with empty hands, at least he’ll have had this. Once he’s sure enough that she’s found her pleasure – with her fingernails dug into his shoulders and a breathy, gasping moan – he lets himself come, too. 

When he falls asleep, underneath Darcy’s blankets with her head on his shoulder, he doesn’t know what his next step will be – back to his claim to try his luck, back to Brooklyn in defeat, or off to start something uncharted and new. For a little while though – the next few hours, at least – it won’t matter.


	3. the dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Steve/Natasha medieval AU.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This little ficlet was written in response to a prompt from [theladyscribe](http://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/pseuds/theladyscribe), who asked for: Steve/Natasha, medieval AU, the knight and his queen.
> 
> Hope you all like it.

*

_The joy of love is too short, and the sorrow thereof, and what cometh thereof, dureth over long._

_-Thomas Malory_

*

 

Theirs is a fierce queen. Like Boadicea and Æthelflæd of old, she rides to battle with them, clad in jet-black armor, her golden-red hair caught in the wind, trailing behind her like a pennant. Those who follow her do so with grim intensity and persistent devotion, and Stephen is no different. She is sun and moon and stars, life and death and rebirth. To see her after a good fight – her hair matted with sweat, her face smeared with red – is to catch sight of something holy.

But he isn’t the same as the others. Of all the men, he is the one she summons to her torch-lit campaign tent, night after night. He is the one who sees her closest – who sees the blood and dirt lining the beds of her fingernails, who sees the twist of pain behind her eyes. He is the one who knows that she tastes like fire and smells like smoke. He has felt her hot and soft under him. To make love to her is to unlock something deep and primal and urgent, something unearthly and unspeakably powerful. Her skin is not the skin of a lady – she is calloused, scarred and bruised. Her hands are rough and deadly; she pulls at his flesh and hair and heart as she spends. She never says a word to him.

And always, after a few too-brief moments in pale morning light, they are back on the battlefield: faced towards their enemy, swallowed in a sea of dull-armored soldiers, with muddy earth beneath their horses’ hooves. She catches his eye through the surging crowd and smiles. Stephen allows himself to smile back. He breathes deep; his chest swells under the cage of his armor. He loves both parts of her - the queen and the woman inside - and at the dawn of each battle, he accepts the imminence of death in her service. It is an oath he has taken twice: once in a throne room, once in a bed.

He lowers his visor. She will not fall; he will not let it happen. But if he is cut down at her side, he is ready for it.


	4. honey honey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for joining me for yet another funny little historical AU, this one is in response to a prompt from lady-cheeky for: Darcy/Bucky/Steve, The Peninsular Wars or Napoleonic Campaign.
> 
> Historical note: This takes place after the defeat of Napoleon after years of fighting, after Napoleon’s exile to Elba, and before Napoleon’s return in 1815 for the Hundred Days of occupation that would be ended finally by the Battle of Waterloo. Reference is made to [Mademoiselle Georges](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marguerite_Georges).
> 
> The title is cribbed from the Feist song, which I listened to many times while writing this, and which reminds me (in a somewhat circuitous way) of this period. Many thanks to [katertots](http://archiveofourown.org/users/katertots/pseuds/katertots) for looking this one over.
> 
> Also, I'm [hardboiledmeggs](http://hardboiledmeggs.tumblr.com) on Tumblr, in case you want to hang out and roll around in feels with me online.

*

_There is nothing on earth so stupid as a gallant officer._  


_\- Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington_

*

**Paris**  
 **1814**

After the curtain lowers, after she’s wiped the white powder and rouge from her face and changed out of her costume, Darcy finds them, just has she has every night for the past week – leaning up against one of the tan stone pillars lining the façade of the Comédie Française. They are both clad in garish crimson jackets, crossed with lines of embroidered white and gold. Their grey wool trousers are covered from toe to knee by dark black boots. But despite the similar dress, they are distinctly separated by looks and demeanor. The taller one is fair and blonde, with brass epaulettes balanced on his broad shoulders. He’s too fond of looking at her with a heart-wrenching sincerity, his gaze filled with foreign, Britannic earnestness. His companion, by contrast, is shorter, darker, less decorated, and perpetually failing to cover up a lascivious glee. Even now, lit up in dim lamplight, she can see the roguish angle of his mouth and a predatory glint in his eye.

That she finds them handsome rankles something inside her, because it’s nothing she ought to think about their new conquerors. Her gloved hands touch the clasp of her jacket, smooth the fabric of her skirt, and she moves past them towards the street. They straighten as she nears them.

“ _Mademoiselle_ ,” the taller one offers as she passes, and she turns to them with raised eyebrows.

He stumbles through a few broken sentences in miserably poor French. Behind him, his comrade pinches the bridge of his nose and looks up at her apologetically. Darcy purses her lips to press down a smile. A part of her itches to laugh at them and send them away, as she’s done to so many of her other besotted followers, but there’s something intriguing about the two sets of ice-blue eyes fixed on her now.

The taller man presses a hand to his chest and says “Stephen,” then puts his other hand on his companion’s shoulder and says “James.” Stephen gestures towards her and calls her “ _une très belle Iphigenia_ ,” by which she assumes he means they liked her performance.

She tells them her name, and she sees Stephen brighten considerably. As though he hadn’t already read it in the playbill. As if a moment of her favor were enough to justify a week of standing in the cold, waiting for her.

They offer her their carriage, and she takes it with a grin. She has always welcomed useful gifts from attractive strangers. They sit facing her, and she spends fifteen minutes listening to Stephen’s valiant attempts at French and pretending that she doesn’t notice the intentional way James’ foot brushes hers.

She leaves them each with a handshake, which she understands to be the custom in England. The dismay on their faces is telling, and far more entertaining than it ought to be.

*

The play changes in the next week, and Darcy plays Hermione instead of Iphigenia, but Stephen and James stay, haunting the Palais Royal until she emerges and they can insist on escorting her to her flat in the Marais. Word of her admirers spreads rapidly through the company, and it’s Mademoiselle Georges herself who takes Darcy aside, smiles like a cat, tells her some truly shocking stories about the Duke of Wellington, and orders Darcy to take her two Englishmen to bed.

For her part, Darcy blushes and tries not to feel the hot flush that goes through her at the mere suggestion. The idea of them over her, under her, hands and mouths and bodies, warm skin and hot breath, is heady and exhilarating. By the end of the evening’s performance, the thought has consumed her for hours. Her heart races, her body aches, and her mind is made up.

No matter how much Darcy tells herself that she likes Stephen’s quiet smiles and the thoughtful way James takes her hand to help her into their carriage, it’s nothing but desire that makes her lead them up to her tiny apartment that night. Nothing more than that.

Her flat is small, but clean and well-appointed, thanks to her modest salary and the contributions of a few wealthy gentleman devotees. The two of them hover by the door for a long moment, Stephen biting at his lower lip and James looking between them expectantly. Darcy smiles and pulls off her coat and gloves.

James takes a breath, casts a final glance at Stephen, and crosses the room towards her. His hands skim along her waist. Out of the corner of her eye, Darcy can see Stephen watching them warily, ready to put a stop to things at the merest sign from her. She just smiles and lets James kiss her, lets herself sigh and lean into his warm, broad chest. Up close she can see something dark and torn behind his eyes, and she wonders what it was that stripped the hesitance and chivalry out of him.

She takes his hand, heavy and calloused, in hers, and reaches across the room for Stephen’s. He’s a little slack-jawed, but a glance downwards reveals an impressive bulge at the front of his trousers. It says something, she thinks, that just the sight of her kissing his comrade could have such an effect. James must have noticed too, because she hears him huff and feels him squeeze her hand too tight. Darcy bends slightly, takes Stephen’s hand in hers and tugs.

“Like this,” she says in heavily-accented English, and pulls them both forward and closer to the open bedroom door.

They exchange a glance as they follow her, and even though she hardly knows them, Darcy can see something charged pass between the two. She wonders what they’ve already shared between themselves – other women, other men, or perhaps they’ve found comfort from the noise and chaos of battle with each other.

Darcy lets go of them once they cross the threshold. She strikes a match and lights a handful of candles, affording her just enough light to see them by.

She lets her gown and chemise fall to the floor in a pile of gauzy fabric. There’s an intoxicating power in the way they look at her, her skin lit up gold. She pulls the pins out of her hair and lets it fall long and dark over her shoulders. James shucks off his uniform so quickly she can’t help but laugh; he pulls her against his bare chest, pressing his flushed erection against her belly, lifts her up and lets them both fall into her bed.

While Stephen carefully folds each piece of his uniform, stacking it in a tidy pile on a chair by the door, James stretches out next to her, pushing her onto one side and pressing against her back. One arm slides between the mattress and her waist, wrapping around her torso, the other hand lowers to cup her backside. Darcy closes her eyes and sighs again, turning her face into her pillow. There’s nothing hurried about it, nothing urgent. The room is silent save for the sound of their breaths, and the sound of skin sliding against skin.

The mattress dips, and when her eyes open again, Stephen lies in front of her. Her hand reaches out and presses flat against his shoulder, slides across hard muscle to his stomach. Her fingers brush against a soft dusting of fine, blond hair, and traverse across pink scars that tell stories of the now-distant front lines.

James presses tighter against her, and she feels him hard and hot behind her. His hand dips lower and he muffles a groan against her shoulder. Stephen presses his mouth to hers as James’ fingers slide between slick folds. She gasps against Stephen’s mouth, scoring his shoulders with her fingernails as James’ hand moves between her legs.

Behind her, she feels James shift, position, and push himself inside her. Stephen scoots closer, and she feels him hard against her thigh as James moves, his hips fitting neatly against hers, the head of his cock gliding against every sensitive nerve. Stephen frames her face with his hands and kisses her, agonizingly slow and unexpectedly filthy. James murmurs something she doesn’t understand, but it makes Stephen gasp sharply, drop his head against her shoulder and push his hand between their bodies.

Darcy feels herself start to tremble, then shakes apart between them, with James inside her and Stephen’s fingers pressed against her. She grips Stephen’s hips, letting her head fall back against James’ shoulder as white light blooms behind her closed eyes. She can feel James come too, letting loose a low growl and thrusting sharply against her. Darcy risks a little sacrilege to pray that her neighbors won’t hear the desperate cries they’re wrenching out of her.

Finally, James pulls back, collapsing back onto the mattress with a groan, his prick wet and softening against his thigh. Darcy has barely a moment to regret the absence before Stephen is over her and inside her. There’s a flood between her legs – an unbearable heat sits low in her belly, and makes her claw at Stephen and the sheets as he pumps his hips against hers.

James props himself up on an elbow, and then his mouth is against hers, against Stephen’s, and _that_ answers a multitude of unasked questions. Time slows to keep time with the languorous sway of Stephen’s hips and the determined glide of James’ tongue. For a long while, Darcy is lost to the world, succumbing completely under the hands of these two soldiers, who have waited so patiently for her. She can hear herself talking, telling them in words they won’t understand how they make her feel, how it feels to be loved by them. At last, she is tipped over the edge again, and Stephen follows her with his hands in her hair and his lips near her ear, trying to tell her the same, but in his own language.

They fall asleep together in a tangle of blankets and limbs, exhausted and spent. In the hazy, lavender morning light, they both look so pretty, asleep in her bed, that Darcy wonders how long she could entice them to stay. But then Stephen wakes, stretching and glancing at his pocketwatch. He shakes James awake, murmurs a few urgent and unintelligible words in English, and they both spring up and pull on their rumpled uniforms.

Before they leave, they kiss her cheeks and hands and mouth. In broken French, they ask her to pardon them for their hasty retreat, and Darcy receives their supplications like some wanton queen, naked and reclined in a bed still warm from their bodies.

She leaves the bed unmade – she wants it to be just the same when she brings them back again that night. But they aren’t at the theater that night, and she misses them again the night after that. She hears that the troops that escorted Wellington have followed him east, and she knows where they’ve gone.

And months later, when Bonaparte returns, she knows they will, too.


	5. in the desert

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This little Steve/Peggy 1920s Egyptology AU was dreamed up over on Tumblr. Obviously this is just something like a beginning. It _may_ be continued. Someday. For the sake of sweaty tent sex.
> 
> The excavation is based on work done by the Metropolitan Museum of Art at Hatshepsut's Temple in the 1920s/30s. I've also returned to one of my favorite AU conceits - the AU where Steve got Captain-Americanized before World War I instead of World War II.

*

_Those were the great days of excavating. Anything to which a fancy was taken, from a scarab to an obelisk, was just appropriated, and if there was a difference of opinion with a brother excavator one laid for him with a gun._

_-Howard Carter, Archaeologist_

*

**Cairo**  
 **1924**

The first time Steve sees her, it takes him aback. He should have known, he thinks later, that any woman who would cross the globe to set up in this miserable desert would have to be a little _different_. 

With Howard Stark at his side, he crosses the lounge of the Shepheard Hotel towards her. It had only been a month earlier that he’d received the millionaire’s letter – an urgent, mysterious request to meet in Cairo. Steve had agreed to it, for the sake of satisfying his own curiosity about the job, and because his billfold had gotten awfully empty. 

“Captain Rogers,” Stark smiles his slick, serpent’s smile, “May I present Miss Margaret Carter of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” 

She’s perched at a barstool. A glass of amber liquid rests on the varnished counter before her. She’s dressed in a white linen shirt; her shirttails are tucked into heavy khaki jodhpurs, which are tucked into high, dark leather boots. Her hair is pulled back at the nape of her neck. If he’d seen her from across the room, only the sight of her face – coffee-colored eyes framed by long black lashes, crimson-painted lips that make his heart stutter – would have told him that she was a dame and not another of the young, adventuresome bucks roaming the streets of Cairo ever since they busted open King Tut’s tomb. 

Margaret extends her hand to him with a delicate twist of the wrist. “Captain, of course,” she says in a crisp accent. Her hand is cool in his. For a moment he thinks to correct her – it’s been years since he was discharged – but he keeps quiet. 

Next to him, Howard Stark grins and rocks back on his heels. Reaching into his white linen jacket, he pulls out a carton of Lucky Strikes and shuffles out a slender cigarette. Margaret takes it and leans in for a light, which Stark produces immediately. 

Steve watches the scene in silence. Some sort of intimate knowledge passes between them. They are familiar and easy with each other, and, though he doesn’t know either of them a damn bit, the thought of that sends something prickly up his spine. 

Stark launches into a long explanation about pay and transportation. Steve nods and tucks his hands into the pockets of his slacks. Margaret swivels her seat towards them, crosses her legs and leans back with her elbows on the counter behind her. She takes infrequent sips of her drink, and more frequent pulls from the cigarette between her fingers. Despite the hum of the fans above them, late afternoon heat stings the back of Steve’s neck. 

The exorbitant amount Stark offers him only heightens the cryptic nature of the assignment, and finally Steve holds up a hand to stop him. Stark’s mouth forms a thin line. Margaret arches an eyebrow. 

“I think you ought to tell me what it is you want me to do.” 

“A smart question,” Margaret leans to tip the ash from her cigarette into a glass ashtray. “You are to accompany me to Deir el-Bahri. That’s where we’re digging. We need a security man, you see, and Howard’s heard all about you from Colonel Phillips. Seems you’re the man for the job.” Her eyes sweep up and down, and Steve feels himself flush. 

He clears his throat. “Security from what?” 

“The things we find are worth rather a lot. There are plenty of people who would sell them off to line their own pockets. It’s your job to see that doesn’t happen.” Margaret glances quickly at Stark, then slips her hand into the pocket of her khakis and hands him a tiny lump of brilliant green steatite. “See there.” 

Steve rolls the stone in his palm. It’s heavy, and warm from Margaret’s body. On one rounded side, it’s decorated with carved, curved lines. 

“It’s a dung beetle,” he says. Margaret laughs, Howard smiles, and Steve wonders how he ended up here – how his years in the field, in battle, could possibly have prepared him for this. 

“It’s a scarab,” Margaret says gently as he passes it back to her, “And terribly old. It stands for the sun, for rebirth. Here in the desert, we are all reborn.” 


End file.
